


Beautiful Life/Sorrowful Life

by thewriterpoe



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:42:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24125332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewriterpoe/pseuds/thewriterpoe
Summary: Photography captures moments. Painting captures feelings.
Relationships: Jung Yoonoh | Jaehyun/Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten
Comments: 6
Kudos: 12





	Beautiful Life/Sorrowful Life

It's ironic. Months of stolen glances and now Ten can't bring himself look at Jaehyun when he's allowed to, when he's supposed to. But it's not as though he needs to look at Jaehyun; his fingers have long since memorized the strokes that make Jaehyun’s strong jaw, the curves that make Jaehyun’s soft mouth, the angles that make Jaehyun’s high nose. Ten has done this hundreds of times before, always from memory, always in secret so he has to remember to look up every once in a while, because Jaehyun can't know. Even if his breath catches at the return gaze, Jaehyun can never know. Not until he's tucked away his feelings and buried them deep in the wild glades of his heart. The valium helps.

Ten doesn't know when he started having these concentrated feeling of suffocation about Jaehyun. One minute Jaehyun is a friend, the next he's something else, something more, something warm. He hadn't considered Jaehyun to be someone to fall in love with – he’s too nice, too perfect, too in love with Taeyong. So, sometimes he stared at him too long, too unguarded and soon found the corners of his mouth lifting, mirroring Jaehyun’s dimpled smile. He had told himself it was just a crush and those things tend to dissipate over a weekend.

“Turn your face to the left slightly. Sorry, no, my left.”

Seven weekends have passed and instead of dissipating the crush has intensified, sharply and painfully into something that makes it hard to breath when he’s looking at him. How inconvenient that Jaehyun should have the kind of face that makes his heart burst into confetti of cuddly things – puppies, fragrant towels, five more minutes on a chilly morning.

“Does it hurt?” Jaehyun asks, “Your hand,” he elaborates when Ten’s expression draws a blank.

Ten is suddenly hit by the unpleasant realization that as much as he is looking at Jaehyun, Jaehyun is also looking at him, watching him with guarded, serious eyes. And on his cheeks, in violent red, are the nights Ten cried thinking about him, curled up on the bathroom floor; the nights Ten came thinking of him, curled up in guilt and shame. Unhelpfully, his mind supplies him a fantasy of Jaehyun deep inside him, face in the crook of his neck to hide his ears still embarrassed by the fact that he got hard by Ten watching him, mumbling about how it felt like Ten was peeling layers off him and rendering his bare self on his canvas.

“No,” Ten lies, even as he flexes and unflexes his right hand. "No, I'm fine."

He’s convinced that Taeyong sent Jaehyun to check up on him. Jaehyun’s never been interested in his art or rather he’s never insisted. He’s not sure why Jaehyun wants a portrait now when it's an open secret that he can't paint even though his hand has healed from an injury some suspect to have been intentional. Ten doesn't know that Jaehyun was with Taeyong three nights ago when they found him passed out in a pool of his own vomit, his studio trashed and reeking of alcohol. Ten doesn't know that while Taeyong cleaned him up, Jaehyun tidied his studio. He doesn't know that Jaehyun found the crumpled paper with a sketch of him bent over a book, and the one of him peering from behind his bangs, and the one of him singing, and the others, many others, clustered at the feet of the easel - all of him, all scribbled over.

“Would you like to see it?” Ten asks. Usually he wouldn’t – he thinks it is bad luck to show unfinished work but if Jaehyun can tell Taeyong that he’s painting again, Taeyong could stop worrying about him and leave him alone. And it’s a good painting, accurate but something’s off. There’s something cold and sad about it that isn’t in Jaehyun, something empty. But it’s not something Jaehyun would know about and so the secret biography of his feelings can remain secret. The soul he bares on that canvas can remain obscured.


End file.
